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Dessert

Geranium Cake

A light cake flavored with geranium leaves, made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Geranium Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a pan with paper and grease it with butter.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the milk, flour, and baking powder, mixing until just combined.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Place geranium leaves in the bottom of the pan and pour the batter over them.

  2. Bake until golden and the leaves can be easily removed.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to help build air pockets and adds sweetness and browning.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it sets during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes airy.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff and folded in to add lift and a light, open texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites gently. Folding preserves the air trapped in the whipped whites. Vigorous stirring deflates them, which leads to a denser, flatter cake.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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